Balanced budget and 5 new cops on Rockford City Council's table

ROCKFORD — The city’s finance committee sent a balanced $129 million budget to the City Council on Monday.

The spending plan would keep next year’s property tax levy flat and make room for an aggressive push to demolish up to 100 dilapidated homes.

Nearly all city fees and licenses would rise 3 percent, as they do most years, including water bills, ambulance rates and liquor and tobacco licenses.

But perhaps most notably, the plan would set aside money to hire five police officers, bringing the department closer to its authorized strength of 278.

At its peak in 2007 and 2008, the department had 306 officers policing the streets. Then a four-year hiring freeze went into effect and the city has been trying to claw its way back to prerecession numbers.

As of September, the department had 273 officers.

Ald. Venita Hervey, D-5, wants to ultimately get the strength back to 300.

“I don’t want people to think what we have is normal,” she said. “To me, we’re still down 20 officers.”

Rockford will get help from the feds to make the hires.

In September, the Justice Department gave the city a grant that would pay for half of the salary of the five officers for their first three years on the force.

The City Council has yet to accept the grant. It would cost Rockford about $175,000 next year to make the hires, and that would rise to $433,000 in 2017 when the city would have to pay the full salaries.

Aldermen Jeanne Oddo, D-8, and Marcus Hill, D-6, questioned how much five officers would really help, and called on the council to spend more on prisoner-reentry and recidivism programs.

“The way I look at it is, we’re going to invest a million dollars into five more officers, but we’re only investing $50,000 in programs that keep people from jail,” Hill said. “Five officers is not going to curb the crime.”

The council will vote on the proposed budget in the coming weeks.

Aldermen started the budget talks facing a projected $2.5 million deficit. The deficit slightly grew when they voted last week to freeze the city’s property tax levy.

Under the proposed budget, the spending gap would be wiped out by dipping into surpluses the city has accumulated over the last few years from two funding sources: employee health care contributions and residents’ garbage and sanitation bills.

The city would spend $2 million from its health fund reserves to pay for insurance premiums next year. That would still leave the city with three months worth of reserves in the fund.

An additional $375,000 would come from the city’s $5 million garbage and sanitation surplus, while $160,000 would be raised by the 3 percent rate hikes.